Stargate SG-1

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"SG1" redirects here. For the mailing list, see SG1 (mailing list).
Fandom
Name: Stargate SG-1
Abbreviation(s): SG1, SG-1
Creator: Jonathan Glassner, Brad Wright
Date(s): 1997-2007
Medium: television series
Country of Origin: US
External Links: IMDB
EpGuides
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Building on the movie Stargate, Stargate SG-1 is about the adventures of a small team who travel to other worlds through Earth's stargate (a device that can "dial" other stargates on other planets, and create a stable wormhole between them that allows nearly instantaneous travel). The team consisted of:

The original overarching storyline, which lasted for eight years, was about Earth's fight against the Goa'uld, a parasitical alien species that survived by enslaving humans throughout the galaxy to use either as hosts or as forced labor. They also modified groups of humans into a new race, the Jaffa, bred to serve both as an elite military force and as living incubators for infant Goa'uld.

Other alien menaces also threatened Earth, particularly Replicators (nanobots that could replicate themselves at will by consuming the raw materials around them).

Eventually both the Goa'uld and the Replicators were (mostly) defeated, and the show took a new turn with a partially-new team in season nine. Carter, Jackson, and Teal'c remained, but two new members joined:

bringing the team to five for the first time.

Jackson and Mal Doran attracted the attention of a powerful, godlike alien species in another galaxy, the Ori, and the next two years were about the struggle to find a way to keep the Ori from enslaving—or killing—the entire Milky Way galaxy's human population.

After its tenth season, the series ended and moved on to two direct-to-DVD movies.

During the series' eighth season, a spinoff show, Stargate Atlantis, started up, with a group of humans traveling through Earth's stargate to the Pegasus galaxy in hopes of finding the lost city of Atlantis. The new show was part of the same canonical universe as Stargate SG-1.

Stargate SG-1 Fandom

The fandom in its early years was heavily mailing-list based, with a variety of lists catering to different preferences -- gen, het, slash, and pairing- or character-specific. It also has a strong zine presence, both gen and slash, and especially during its early years was active on newsgroups as well. A LiveJournal based fandom has also sprung up over the years, whose current hub is a biweekly Newsletter, sg1_debrief, created in June 2006. As of 2013 there was a community of the same name following the fandom on Dreamwidth. The LiveJournal community Redial the Gate started a rewatch of the entire series on July 24, 2007. A significant portion of the J/D side of fandom moved over to Dreamwidth with Synecdochic and her friends. The LJ community stargateficrec is also a central hub.

There are several popular archives, including Area52 and Heliopolis (see links further down this page), and the fandom also has a presence on Archive of Our Own.

Early mailing lists

Early Forums

Fanfiction

See Category:Stargate SG-1 Fanfiction for some examples.

As with most SF fandoms that develop fandoms, the gen writers do more in-depth playing with the universe and focus on the friendship between the characters. Non-gen writing clusters around several specific pairings: Sam/Jack for het, Jack/Daniel for slash, and Sam/Janet for femslash. Other pairings have always been written about, but not nearly to the same extent.

One thing SG-1 fanfic is famous for is using the fannish term "Danny whumping"[1][2][3] which describes a form of h/c. Similar to Muldertorture in X-Files fandom, it is a fandom-specific expression for the praxis of physically and psychologically abusing one's favorite character in fanfiction. Daniel was the character a lot of fans loved most, which means he was the one they loved to hurt the most. Danny whumping was extremely popular, especially in gen fiction. There is a Daniel Jackson Whumping Society[4] and the Whumpalicious Archaeologist[5] page is dedicated to Danny whumping fanfic and vids. One response to the question of what makes Daniel so whumpalicious gives as an answer: Because it's so damn sexy. Watching Daniel get beat up, crying, screaming, I love all of it. It gives me tingles and makes me grin madly.[6] By now the term whumping has spread to several other fandoms that like to hurt their woobies.

Fanfic: Trends

While one influential fan believed strongly that the SG-1 slash fiction was famous for years for its relatively small size, and poor quality, relative to other fandoms of its age and era, many other fans have a more balanced view. Influential early writers such as Anna S, Martha, Quercus, Biblio, Keiko Kirin and Destina, for example, were writing excellent Jack/Daniel slash before Season 5, when the actor who played Daniel left the show. One influential fan chose to stress a category of Jack/Daniel that stood out to her for its lack of quality. She believed that for years, the most common writers in the fandom were notable for having Jack (in his late 40s-early 50s during the show's run) think of Daniel (in his mid-30s to mid-40s through the show's run) as "boy", or continually writing Daniel as wearing "jammies".

Other fans focused not on the badfic, but on the good fic that was abundant in the fandom, whether the reader was searching for slash, gen or het.

Around 2001 the slash fandom saw an influx of good writers which caused a late bloom for the Jack/Daniel pairing and turned the fandom for a while into a slash hotspot. Notable writers from this period include Kres, Tripoli, Paian/Komos, Dith, Otter, and many others for Jack/Daniel. Also, notably, Annerb for Sam/Jack.

When Daniel's actor took a year off the show in season six, Jack/Daniel fandom seemed close to dying out to some observers. Some writers left, but the pairing has always had a loyal following. In more recent years, with Daniel's return and the addition of another slashable character on the show, the slash fandom has revived and even grown. As of 2008, the active SG-1 slash fandom was once again smallish, but busy.

As is often the case in aging, closed-canon fandoms, SG-1 fans are not always easy to lump into discrete slash, het and gen cabals. There is much cross-pollination and collaboration even among fans whose favorite pairings contradict each other. SG-1 fans use the sci-fi/military setting, the parasitic, free will-clobbering aliens, and the canonical surfeit of clones, quantum twins and other assorted doubles to explore identity, autonomy, nature vs. nurture, roads not taken, and (yes, hi, we're fandom) sexuality and gender. The fandom boasts every conceivable take on AMTDI, mind meld and bodyswap, and has recently developed an affection for genderswap and queer het.

Apocalypse fic and other canon-divergent AUs are abundant,[7] as are AUs that translate the characters to completely new settings such as the Cold War or 1950s Memphis.

SG-1 fandom has at least one active shared universe: Clan Mitchell, run by Synecdochic and Ivory Gates.[8]

Fanfic: Ships

The Venerable Ship Jack/Daniel sails on, though its tropes have changed. Daniel's character has evolved so drastically from the jammie-wearer of early fanfic that non-J/D, ship-centric fiction frequently defaults him to the more dominant role. Even in J/D stories, Daniel is almost always a switch. J/D fiction frequently uses DADT, the frat regs, and Jack's warring loyalties to his team members and the military as a source of tension.

Sam/Jack: This was the 'officially sanctioned' canon ship in the series, for all that it had to be hinted at through PDAs in AU Stargate universes. A great deal of S/J stories draw tension from the fact that Jack is Sam's commanding officer, as well as from the perceived distance between the two that seemed to grow from Season 5 onwards. As a result of eight seasons of perceived canon UST with no resolution, Mutual Pining is a staple of S/J fic. Stories often place Sam and Jack in a situation that forces them out of their usual dynamic, often through storylines such as Stranded Off-World, Aliens Made Them Do It, and Accidentally Married. The introduction of Pete Shanahan in season 7 as Sam's love interest (and later fiance) was met with near-universal disdain, with many fans criticizing Pete's stalker tendencies, insincerity, and general disrespect of Sam. Pete became a common plot point in S/J fiction set in seasons 7 and 8, with many authors writing stories (crack, humor, angst, and everything in between) expressly to "Delete Pete". After Season 8, post-Threads stories became popular. These stories mainly deal with how Sam and Jack might begin a long-distance relationship, with Sam moving to Area 51 and Jack going to Washington.

Teal'c, like many black characters on majority white shows, doesn't get much fannish play (see Race and Fandom). Efforts have been made to rectify this: he has a few ficathons all to himself, which have yielded gems. Teal'c/Sam is not uncommon, but tends to be written as an afterthought in Jack/Daniel stories, so that the whole team can be happy (somewhat the same way that Teyla/Ronon are in the background of many McShep stories, rather than the forefront of their own stories). In slash stories, talk of Teal'c coming from a warrior culture that "understands" that sort of thing is common, whether to use Teal'c to talk Jack off the ceiling, or to set up Teal'c and another male character. Teal'c/Jack was very uncommon until Teal'c got rid of his symbiote -- fannish consensus was that Jack hated and feared the Goa'uld too much to be naked and relaxed around a symbiote. Teal'c/Daniel is rare, but Teal'c/Cam has a substantial following. Minxy maintains an excellent Teal'c recs list.

Other rare pairings had small followings, utilising secondary characters and groups such as the Tok'ra (for example Martouf had both het and slash ships during his brief run on the show) however slash rarepairs were less common than in other fandoms due to the overwhelming presence of J/D.

The fandom around the Sam/Janet pairing never got large, but had a steady following until Janet died in 7th season.

Cam Mitchell looks good on everybody. Daniel/Cam showed up immediately. In addition to luring new fans in from Farscape, he sparked a notable upswing of interest in Teal'c, as the two are eminently slashable (and Daniel, per many, already has a boyfriend).

Despite her sometimes overtly sexual nature, Vala Mal Doran is surprisingly less of a little black dress character than Cameron and is primarily shipped with Daniel and slashed with Sam, though she does often show up in rare pairings. Some more common but still rare pairings include Vala/John Sheppard, Vala/Teal'c, and Vala/Cameron.

Over the course of the last two seasons, Vala/Daniel developed a following that makes it arguably the second most popular het pairing in the series, though it is still small relative to Sam/Jack. The pairing received tacit official support as the two were frequently placed together in many episodes and much was made of their relationship in episodes such as Memento Mori and The Quest part 2. The pairing was even made canon in an alternate time line. All of this no doubt helped the pairing gain a fan following.

Threesomes and moresomes or OT4s are all represented in the fandom.

Fanfic: Crossovers

Stargate SG-1 crosses over most often with other Stargate properties, Stargate Atlantis being most popular among them. In fact Stargate Atlantis characters often appear as side characters in SG-1 fics, and vice versa. Fusions and crossovers with supernatural-themed fandoms (such as Buffyverse, Supernatural and Harry Potter) are also popular. Additionally fusions and crossovers with the Sentinel fandom re popular in shippy fics, with the main pairing becoming a Sentinel/Guide pair.

Due to a heavy contingent of Marines operating out of SGC, SG-1 fic also sometimes crosses over with NCIS, bringing the characters from that fandom to investigate crimes in SGC, or placing them (usually Anthony DiNozzo) as Agent(s) Afloat.

Fanfic: Examples

For a full list, on Fanlore, go to Category:Stargate SG-1 Fanfiction

Fanzines

Like most post-2000 fandoms, the bulk of Stargate SG1 fan fiction is online. Some fiction, however, is in print zines—about 200 titles have been published. See List of Stargate SG-1 Fanzines. For a complete listing see Gen and Het Zines and Slash zines.

Awards

RPF

There's a small fandom for Real People Fiction about actors in the series.[9]

Fanart

Vids

Archives

Mailing Lists

see also List of Stargate SG-1 Mailing Lists

  • Gateway "Gateway". Archived from the original on 2003-11-18. M/M Slash, F/F Slash ·· Discussion, Fiction. "The Gateway List is for the discussion and fanfic of the slashy aspects of the Stargate SG-1 show. Discussion of the actors' careers and talents is on-topic for this list. Discussion of the actors' personal lives is not. Ratings from G to NC-17 (which is why the age statement to [email protected] is required). Most of the time this means M/M relationships but F/F are welcome as well. Crossovers and AUs are also welcome as long as places or characters from the show are apparent. What's not welcome on this list is het fiction of any kind."

Fansites

  • Baal Argento (2005) - personal Spanish-language fansite for SG-1 and SGA.

Meta

Further Reading

References

  1. ^ OXBastedXO says in her FF.net profile that one of her minor claims to fame is coining the term "Danny Whumping" in SG-1 fandom. (Accessed 13 November 2008)
  2. ^ The Whumping article at Fan History Wiki equally credits OXBastedXO and Yum@. (Accessed 13 November 2008)
  3. ^ See the whump page for a possible earlier use of the term "whump" in another fandom.
  4. ^ Daniel Jackson Whumping Society
  5. ^ Whumpalicious Archaeologist
  6. ^ Angy. Whumpalicious Archaeologist, added 15 August 2005. (Accessed 13 November 2008)
  7. ^ The Apocalypse KREE! ficathon ran in 2007 and 2008.
  8. ^ Clan Mitchell community profile, created 25 August 2007. (Accessed on 25 October 2008.)
  9. ^ "Stargate SG1 Episode Guide". Archived from the original on 2022-01-16.
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